Auburn spares elementary summer school

Auburn, NY -- The Auburn school board Tuesday night adopted a contingency budget that maintains part of the elementary school summer school program.

The budget totals $65,896,428 -- the highest amount allowed by the state for Auburn to spend under a contingency budget.

To get to that number, the board told district officials to reduce the number of pupils served in the summer school program from 186 to about 120 and run the program for grades pre-kindergarten through grade two. The cost for this will be offset by not hiring a replacement for a retiring high school teacher.

The district had to cut $593,000 from the $66.5 million budget residents voted down twice to reach the contingency figure. But how those cuts were made was the focus of a nearly hour-long discussion by the board Tuesday night.

Originally, district officials stated items to be cut included a custodial position, $198,000 in equipment purchases, outside-the-district field trips and the related transportation, some funding for athletic and co-curricular (intramurals and band) activities and the elementary summer school program.

There was little to no discussion about the other cuts. But it was evident the board believed strongly everything possible should be done to spare the summer school program.

"I don't want to see an academic program suffer because we didn't do our job to get the budget passed," said Frederick Cornelius.